Comments on Profile Post by Ti_Leo

I DMed someone saying he's going to check this amp on HF, asking about his opinion, but he didn't have the chance, then he asked me the same question as I told him I bought the amp. So here's my reply (edited, because 420):

The amp was damaged by shipping or careless seller, because the amp was modded, the seller swapped the filtering caps to purple SILMIC II. Many screws were loose and two cables of four input socket were broken. I did a little tightening and soldered the cabled back.

It's working, but beware, it's NOT in its original form. And I can occasionally hear some low level noise when nothing is playing.

And this is a quick comparison, it's not scientific, and I'm not that good at comparing gears.

DAC: Schiit Yggdrasil GS (Balanced mostly. I did get lazy using SE on Deimos during the comparison, but I realized the problem and I went to swap the cables manually later)
Headphones: modded HD800 and modded HE6SE V1
Gain: Deimos: low, Raggy: middle

OK, It sounds great. Comparing to my broken Schiit Ragnarok V1 (only sips 40W power, occasionally distorted left channel) (why are my amps all broken?!!!)

Deimos feels a bit leaner, cooler or a bit "Hifi-er", as things are clearer, more defined more incisive. I thought my Raggy was incisive enough, but this thing is better. And when things gets too much in this direction, I will feel fatigue, but I'm fine now.

Macrodetail-wise, Deimos >= Raggy, so it's great. 5 minutes later, I'd say Deimos is a bit better?

Microdetail... I'm not good at it, the first thing is Deimos sounds clearer with blacker background, might not be a good thing as it could be microdetails got washes away. But I currently don't find myself missing things, and I don't feel like cry with the singer either, so it's fine, maybe Deimos <= Raggy on this one?

Timber. I think I prefer Raggy. As Raggy has this inner warmth, Deimos can be a bit "hifi sounding" to me, it's like Raggy is a pair of good dynamic headphones, while Deimos is planar. But it's not like HD650 vs Hifiman HE5 reissued, I've listened to many round-shaped Hifiman headphones, many gave me this cleaner sounding, leaner instrument stripes, darker background / lack of microdetail type of feeling.

OMG the bass is HUGE using HE6SE on Deimos, I modded these headphones to get a bit more mid~upper bass, for warmer feeling, now it could be a bit too much (edit: 5 minutes later, got my ears burned-in, huge bass here I come!!!). But it's fine on HD800, it sounds mostly correct except the treble peak is back, a little.

BUT, here comes the big caveat: I only paid ~ $450 for it, I don't know how I'd value this amp:

At its OG price? Hell no! I'd definitely go for EC or DNA amps (Only used EC ZDSE briefly, because it's also broken. But that thing is magical if not holy with HD800)

If it's the same MSRP as Raggy? I'd choose Raggy, as my unit is broken and if by fixing it I can get 10% better sounding, then Raggy should be better.

If it's <= $1000, I'd like it. But I realized that we can buy Pietus Maximus for $500, and Mjolnir 3 for $1200. I haven't heard those two but they look promising.

But Deimos looks cool, right?

This is just my feeling for 45 minutes. Maybe there's something special on Deimos that I didn't find, or it just got modded away... Sigh...

Ok, I think I'm a bit fatigued, but mostly due to higher volume I guess...

That's it. How did I wrote that much?

I'm a lonely man.

No, all good bro. But you might wanna create a thread on this instead.

@joch Thanks but... This comparison is based on two broken / modded amps, I don't think it's that valid? Besides, no one is really considering that €4000 amp, right?